Guessing $20000 a month for each of the employees?? HAHAHAHA wow no note: I am not complaining about my salary but absolutely not, no - ThreadSky

jillithe.bsky.social • 40 days ago

Guessing $20000 a month for each of the employees?? HAHAHAHA wow no
note: I am not complaining about my salary but absolutely not, no

Reposted from Polygon

Did Dragon Age: The Veilguard undersell or face unrealistic expectations?

Comments

elenatchii.bsky.social•40 days ago

there’s uh. an extra zero in there they can’t possibly think we earn this much

elenatchii.bsky.social•40 days ago

i’m actually baffled, is this how journalists are estimating game budgets?? and that’s in USD too!! insanity

elenatchii.bsky.social•40 days ago

do laymen think game devs are rich… i can barely afford a one bedroom in vancouver 💀 and i have minimal expenses since i don’t drive and don’t have kids

imasithduh.bsky.social•40 days ago

Oh they absolutely do.

They think the $$ the shareholders and c-suite are pocketing is going to the devs for some reason.

jillithe.bsky.social•39 days ago

If we made 20k a month, the hoodies and jeans we wear to work would be a lot fancier.

imasithduh.bsky.social•39 days ago

If that were the average pay, when I was in the industry I wouldn't have had to live with three other people just to barely afford rent.

Also, I wouldn't have been driving a rustbucket of a car.

witchspace.bsky.social•40 days ago

Yeah, this is not an industry to join if you are looking to get rich. As ever too many folks think back to folks driving around in Ferraris in the 90s ... and even then that was the 1%

jillithe.bsky.social•40 days ago

Yeah like I'm a "22-year veteran" and woowwwww

jonrenish.bsky.social•40 days ago

Maybe if that includes everything and not just salary. Still a stretch.

jillithe.bsky.social•40 days ago

Ooh ... In Canada there's a big per-employee cost that doesn't exist: health insurance.
(Well, it's a lot less. We still have health/vision/optical/dentist/prescription benefits)

kurlancheek.bsky.social•40 days ago

Ugh you're going to make me defend The Man here. :( Usually these employee costs are "all-in", so they include not just salaries, but benefits, hardware/software, office space (lol remote), and so on. 10-15 years ago, the napkin math was ~10-12k/employee/month.

jillithe.bsky.social•40 days ago

I think the guesstimator looked at programmer salaries in the US and not so much at Canada or at other positions. In that case it seems like it'd be a fair guess.

jillithe.bsky.social•40 days ago

They're supposed to break it down further, but I doubt the data gathered was all that thorough or precise.

kurlancheek.bsky.social•40 days ago

Yeah, those salary sites / spreadsheets are usually wildly disparate too, depending on participation and such. (I really want to underscore that I'm not defending these quotes, but having been on the side of the financials, it was always surprising how much higher cost was than just salary.)

jillithe.bsky.social•40 days ago

BioWare is certainly paying a lot for the 3 floors of high end office space that they set up all fancy and we used for about 6 months before COVID hit :)

kurlancheek.bsky.social•40 days ago

Yeahhhhh, we were paying silly amounts for 2 years of COVID office space. It killed me inside that we couldn't get out of that lease.

allanshoe.bsky.social•40 days ago

I know the costs is more than just our salaries but I've heard that it can be about double... and lmao at the idea of the average wage of the studio being $120k a year.

jillithe.bsky.social•40 days ago

20k USD a month is 240k, my friend!

allanshoe.bsky.social•40 days ago

Oh I was saying I have heard that the costs per employee can be more than our actual salaries, but even if it was double the salaries, that'd still mean we were making $120k.

And that feels like "lets just imagine the worst case." This is like the laughably worst case upper bounds of costs hahaha.

jillithe.bsky.social•40 days ago

Yeah... I don't know what starting salaries are these days, though I hope it's more than the 40k I had in this economy

(obligatory "there are many people out there who would be so so grateful for 40k and I am not complaining" disclaimer

allanshoe.bsky.social•40 days ago

Yeah I get it. Although I sometimes feel game devs get some of the abuse because some feel we're not far away from our Ferraris etc.

jillithe.bsky.social•40 days ago

My very sensible 7-year-old Subaru is the Ferrari of Edmonton.

allanshoe.bsky.social•40 days ago

Especially if we consider USD!

jasonschreier.bsky.social•40 days ago

FWIW this Polygon article is citing a piece I wrote, and I got that figure from producers in cities like SF and LA who are using that estimate to reflect salary, benefits, and other overhead costs. The number's likely lower in Edmonton, but probably not by that much!

jillithe.bsky.social•40 days ago

Ah, I think they cut out the part where they're using the figure to include overhead and all that. The implication is that 20k is the estimate for just salary!
(Sorry to imply any lack of journalistic due diligence. Figured someone was talking to an executive :D)

jasonschreier.bsky.social•40 days ago

Yeah that article left this out, but here's the original source:

deepfriar.bsky.social•40 days ago

I do find it interesting that this doesn't encourage larger companies to shift to smaller teams with smaller, more frequent games and therefore shorter production times.

Not everyone can be a Microsoft, Rockstar, etc.

Probably more complicated considering the need for continuous growth, etc

jillithe.bsky.social•39 days ago

The AAA gaming industry certain seems to be dying, but I'm not sure if the big companies know how to handle it other than trying to make even bigger games with fewer people.

deepfriar.bsky.social•39 days ago

Doesn't seem sensible from where I'm standing, but 🤷‍♂️

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